RFR gets great deal on Chrysler Building but theres a catch

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Aby Rosen’s RFR Holding is poised to buy the Chrysler Building for peanuts — around $150 million, compared with the $800 million the Abu Dhabi Investment Council paid Tishman Speyer and a German fund for a 90 percent stake in the landmark skyscraper in 2008.

But the deal — which includes the highly profitable Trylons retail pavilion next door — comes with a big asterisk. It’s a leasehold purchase and doesn’t include the land, which is owned by Cooper Union.

RFR and an unidentified foreign partner must pay the school ground rent that’s currently $32.5 million a year, compared with only $7.75 million in 2018. The ground rent will rise to $41 million in 2028.

Meanwhile, the 1.2 million-square-foot tower at Lexington Avenue and East 42nd Street is nearly 20 percent vacant. The new owners will need to invest heavily to make its available floors appealing to modern tenants.

ADIC and Tishman Speyer put Chrysler up for sale in January. Insiders speculated that the sellers would be fortunate to recoup the $800 million paid by the Mideast fund 11 years earlier.

But the lowball sale price came as a shock.

“The sale offer was driven by ADIC, not Tishman Speyer,” a source told The Post. “Tishman knew that the building needed a lot of work and it knew how to do it, but ADIC wasn’t interested.”

Rosen’s company has revived several aged landmark office properties, most notably the Seagram Building and Lever House on Park Avenue.

But Lever House also came with a ground lease, which Rosen struggled to make payments on. The building’s debt was recently resold, as The Post reported in January, and RFR’s future role is cloudy although it continues to manage the property.

RFR’s Chrysler purchase was first forecast by The Real Deal on Friday.

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